Tag Archives: health

The boost

I finally got my notification and am booked for my 3rd, booster, Covid-19 shot. I still have to wait a couple weeks to get it, but at least I have a date on the calendar.

Our bodies are amazing things, and the idea that we can train our blood cells to fight off a virus before it can affect us adversely is incredible. That we now have the science to do so without even giving us a less harmful version of the virus is even more astonishing.

I’ve been big on pushing Vitamin D as a great way to boost our immune systems. It’s a cheap, easy to access, almost impossible to overdose, vitamin that is also a hormone which helps our immune system. It can’t and won’t prevent covid, but it can drastically reduce how covid and other ailments affect you, if you get sick. And, about 70-85% of people in the northern hemisphere are deficient in Vitamin D, due to a lack of sunlight, (especially in the winter).

I’m also a huge advocate for the vaccine. I had measles, mumps, and chicken pox in the same school year as a kid. I missed 40+ days of school that year. My kids didn’t have to go through that. My mother-in-law had polio, my wife and I didn’t have to go through that.

MNRA vaccines, and the science behind them, could potentially prevent a far worse (more fatal) virus in the future from ravaging the human race. And how could it do this? By giving our immune system a timely and needed boost.

Politics aside, profits to big pharma aside, possible covid treatments, after getting sick, aside. What we have here is a chance to reduce the likelihood of having a bad covid experience. Go to any social media site you like and search the hashtag #longcovid, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook, Instagram… regular people of all ages and many in good health pre-covid.

Will a booster guarantee anything? No. But I am happy to give my immune system a boost, and hopefully you will too.

Healthy living goals reflection 2021

It’s that time of year again when I look back at my healthy living goals sticker chart, and also plan for next year.

This was the post at the end of 2020. And this was for 2019, the year I started this.

2021 in review:

Workouts: 287days or 78.6%

Writing: Daily blog 100%

Meditation: 346 days or 94.8%

Archery: 129 days or 35.3% (Goal was 100 days so actually 129%.)

This was an awesome year for fitness. I am about 6-8 pounds heavier, with a fair bit of increase in size in my upper body and small but noticeable increases in my quads. I feel fit and strong, and I think I only had a couple minor slow downs from back pain, with minimal recovery time. I still need to stretch more, and I still rely a bit too much on deep massage therapy to keep the pain away, but I know that slow, careful strength progress, and more time using my standing desk at work, has significantly reduced the amount of regular pain I’ve had to deal with in my lower back.

Last year I did one more workout in the year… but it was a leap year so I’m going to call it even. I hope to maintain this next year too. Working out slightly more than 3 out of every 4 days for a full year is an excellent goal.

My daily blog has been going strong since July 2019… and while I could probably stop tracking this, I want to keep it as a goal for next year. The chart is a good motivator, and there is nothing wrong with having one of my goals be something that I commit to every single day.

Meditation: I missed 13 days from January to November, and 6 more in December. It has not been a good month for meditation. My goal this year was supposed to be tracking days when I meditate more than once to increase my time. I did this 6 times in January and didn’t continue. It did not become a habit. This year I want to increase the total time by going longer than 10 minutes on weekends, and doing more self-guided meditations mid week, so that mini lessons on the Calm App are not part of my meditation time. This is a more realistic way to take my daily meditation to the next level.

Archery was a new goal this year and I hoped to shoot a total of 100 days. I’m thrilled that I hit 129 days, and my goal next year will be 120.

So, no new goals next year, just a couple adjustments on my current goals. I do plan to write more, but I’m going to calendar that, rather than chart it. So 2022 will be about keeping the good habits going… if you have a few goals you’d like to track, buy yourself a year long calendar and make it happen! (Here are my tips.)

May your 2022 be amazing!

Sleep cycle

I know that I don’t sleep enough, and I know that this can have long term health affects, but I can’t seem to get to bed early. And, I continue to wake up before my alarm, no matter what time I decide to wake up. My alarm has gone off once in 3 weeks and it was a night where I decided to change my wake up time during the night, rather than before bed.

But this morning I feel tired even if it was easy to beat my alarm. I actually stayed in bed until my wife’s alarm went off, but that extra time wasn’t restful as I thought about getting writing and meditation done to start the day. I run weight club today at lunch with the students and I’ll get a small workout in so that’s the time I can make up this morning.

I love working late at night. I enjoy the quiet after everyone is in bed. I usually enjoy waking up early and doing more to start my day before most people even wake up. I don’t love that doing both of these things end up giving me 7 or less hours sleep each night. I’m going to try reading in bed at night, and see if I can get myself to sleep earlier.

Just because I can consistently sleep less than 7 hours a night doesn’t mean that I should do so. There’s too much evidence to suggest this isn’t good for my long term health, and it seems silly to spend so much time exercising and taking care of myself, yet undermining my future with a lack of sleep.

Early warning systems

I received word last night that a retired colleague and friend died yesterday. Cancer sucks. I know there will be a time in the future when we will be able to beat cancer consistently. Even before that, I think we will develop very early methods of detecting it. We might prick our fingers once a month and hundreds of health concerns might be detected early on, or maybe we just go to the bathroom and the toilet itself will detect concerns by doing a daily water test of our waste.

Essentially, early detection will help us detect the cancer early and we can knock it out before it kicks the hell out of us. This will likely happen before we actually beat cancer altogether… we just become really good at detecting it early. “Kill a snake when it is small,” my grandfather used to say.

My wife has an Apple Watch. In a decade or so, most of us will have a device like this that will monitor our health and do daily diagnostics for us. It will monitor our heart rate, blood pressure, temperature, sleep patterns, and a whole series of other biometrics that will create a baseline for us, and let us know when things aren’t at homeostasis. We will get medical feedback that will become an early warning system for us when our readings are off.

Imagine getting a little warning from a wearable device that tells us that our heart is doing something that has been detected in thousands of people a month or so before they got a heart attack, and suggesting you go for a checkup… and sharing this data with your doctor. Imagine learning that you have the flu before feeling the symptoms, and this device tells you to stay home and not spread your contagion.

We aren’t there yet, but I look forward to the day when we can count on an early detection device saving our lives, and extending the lives of those we love and care for.

Aches and pains

I do a lot to take care of myself and for the most part, I feel good about my progress. But today I feel old.

I usually take in the attitude that age is just a number. I’m as young as I believe that I am. Today my age wins.

Saturday on my 5km walk with my wife, she decided to jog for some of it. I enjoy jogging at my wife’s pace and thought nothing of it. I will run on my treadmill faster than this, and for longer than the two sections we jogged for. Sunday after my archery I did an 8 minute leg workout that I usually do, and added about 4 reps of an assisted pistol squat, because I’m very slowly trying to get myself to the point that I can do these.

But by Sunday night my knee was hurting. I don’t know why, but think it might be running on uneven terrain rather than on the treadmill, or trying the pistol squat after my 8 minute workout, when my legs are fatigued. Then I got a hip cramp that night.

After this my shoulders and back tightened up and for the first time in several months I felt shoulder pain. I only did one exercise with my arms that was slightly different than my usual routine, and I intentionally did it with light weights since it was new. Besides, it was a bicep exercise, not a shoulder one.

This ache caused me to tense up my upper back and the tension between my shoulder blades was so tight, I had to push my back into doorway jams to work the kinks out several times during the day… basically using the corners of the doorway to massage the knots out of my upper back.

Old. That’s the feeling this morning. I feel like the rust has formed on my joints, and the whole machine is seizing up. This morning I’ll ride my stationary bike for 20 leisurely minutes, do some stretching, and that will be my workout. Tomorrow I have a massage booked and it will be a painful one. A lot of deep tissue work on my upper back, and hamstring work because my tight hamstrings tend to be the root of my leg and hip issues.

Maybe after that I can remember why I work so hard to take care of myself, remember to spend more time stretching, and start to feel young again. Maybe I need reminders like this to refocus me. When I don’t exercise, my back pain becomes chronic. But I have to say that it’s not fun to ache in several places at once, and while exercise usually keeps the rust away, right now this machine feels old and rusty.

This morning my age is getting the best of me… but I’m not done feeling young. I’ll work my way back to healthy, and oil these joints back to fully operational again. The alternative to this is being lazy and letting myself fall back into a life of daily pain, and feeling even older than I do today. No, I’d rather keep active and find my way back to feeling young again.

Colourblind discovery

A few years ago I developed Central Serous Retinopathy in my left eye. It sounds scarier than it is. Basically, a small bubble forms on the back of your retina, blurring your vision but only at your focal point. This is extremely annoying. Imagine trying to read something and the only word that is blurry is the one you are trying to read.

It can be stress and insomnia related, among other things, and happens mostly to males 40+. It is also something that goes away over time and seldom needs treatment. For me it was extra annoying because I’m left I dominant, and that’s the eye that wants to focus on things close to your nose… like a computer screen. Eventually it went away, but my focus is definitely a little softer for things like reading, and when I’m fatigued, I find it hard to read, and will put on readers with a low, but necessary magnification.

Yesterday I was out in the sun for a while and had suntan lotion on my face. Later, I was lying on the couch, playing a mindless pop-the-bubbles game in my phone that I sometimes play. I like it because a round is really short and I don’t find myself wanting to play too long… a quick break that doesn’t become a large distraction. I’ll play it when my wife is watching the news. I can listen in and don’t need to watch him the screen.

So I was playing this game where I have to have to shoot a coloured bubble and hit at least 2 more of the same colour to pop them. I think I rubbed my right eye and some suntan lotion got in it. It was streaming tears a bit and I didn’t realize I was only looking through my left eye. Then I pointed a blue bubble at two green and one blue one, thinking they were all blue and that they would all pop. They didn’t. I thought there was a glitch in the game.

I looked again with both eyes and suddenly I saw the green. That’s when I realized that I’m blue/green colourblind, but only in the focal area of my left eye. I shut my right eye and any green that I looked at became just a slightly lighter version of the blue, but only where I focused, the other green dots in my peripheral vision stayed green.

I found this test online, and sure enough, I can’t read it with my left eye, but the blue numbers don’t completely disappear, parts of it fade out depending on where I look.

I wonder if this is something I’ve had my whole life or if it was brought on by the Central Serous Retinopathy? A Google search hasn’t led me to believe these are connected yet they both have affected only the focal area of my left eye. Also, this seems like a weird thing to not know about myself for 53 years of my life.

It is a weird experience shifting my focal point and watching coloured shapes morph or disappear right before my eye. It makes me think about all the things we go through life not seeing, not being aware of. We don’t see the same ranges of colour as other animals. What do we miss that our eyes aren’t capable of seeing… and what are we missing simply because we are oblivious?

Not on all cylinders

Woke up with a pounding headache this morning and not feeling 100%. Isn’t it odd that any other time but covid, I’d take a couple pain relievers (which I just did), then head off to work. I’d muscle through the day and even stay late to get things done. Pre-covid I’d also go to school with a cold and runny nose, or other flu symptoms. I wonder how any times in the past I spread my sickness, somehow thinking I was doing something good by avoiding a sick day.

No flu symptoms today, but definitely best if I stay home today… and also best if I stop looking at this screen right now. Back to sleep if my thumping brain will let me.

New fitness goal

About 4 years ago I was the heaviest I’ve ever been. I did 3 months of the Ketogenic diet and lost 15lbs. I loved how I felt but I hated how antisocial the diet was. It is a lifestyle that’s hard to keep. I also started intermittent fasting and that did wonders for my mood. I used to get ‘hangry’, angry when I was hungry, but intermittent fasting seemed to change that and evened out my sugar levels and my mood.

I’ve been on a fantastic healthy living journey since I started my sticker chart at the start of 2019, (here’s a post and video after a year on this journey), and I’ve kept this up. But at the start of the school year I dropped a bit too much weight and actually ended up lighter than my university weight, despite working out 5-6 times a week. So I started drinking a protein shake in the morning and worrying less about fasting.

Now, 6 months later, I’ve gained about 5-6 healthy pounds back, but considering how hard I’ve been pushing myself, I should have gained more muscle mass by now. So I’m going to change a few things.

My plan:

1. Eat more and more often.

2. Two protein shakes a day.

3. Add creatine monohydrate and BCAA supplements.

4. Train with a focus on strength and pushing my muscles to fatigue… but also giving different muscle groups more rest between workouts

5. Stretch more and make sure I maintain (and hopefully improve) flexibility.

6. Drink more water.

My goal: Gain 7-10 pounds in the next 6-8 weeks, then reduce my food intake and go back to lighter weights with higher reps, and probably lose 2-4 pounds. I hope plan to end up at least 5 pounds heavier than I am now.

That might seem like a lot of work for 5 pounds, but it will be 5 pounds that I want and that I know that I can keep on. I was the same body weight, give or take just a couple pounds from about age 26 to my mid 40’s, if I got fit or unfit, the weight just shifted but didn’t change. It was only when I approached 50 that the unhealthy weight gain started.

I should mention that I’m also going back to the challenge I had with my brother-in-law. The goal was 60 push-ups and 30 pull-ups. I got to 60 push-ups (barely and not prettily) but I had to stop the pull-ups for a while. I have started back and last night I did 21. I want to hit 30 in the next 6 weeks as well.

So now I have set goals. I’ve made them public, and I’ve started on my path. I’m putting a reminder in my calendar for every Sunday to weigh myself, and a reality check reminder with a link to this post on May 18th. I believe that I’ll achieve my goals as long as I remember my age, and be smart about not pushing my body (and especially my back) too hard. On with the plan!

Lessons from a 97yr old

This 2.5 minute video is an absolute gem! Meet Charles Eugster:

I’ve been on a fitness kick since the start of 2019, and I feel younger than I did in 2018. I know I won’t win the battle against old age, and that my abilities will decrease. But, I also know that I can live more vibrantly in my old age if I keep this up… and quite frankly the alternatives suck.

There are so many take-aways in this short video. Watch it again. Think about how Charles’ attitude could benefit you, no matter how old you are.

Flossing your teeth

Flossing is something that is extremely good for you, you know it, it doesn’t take long… and you don’t do it.

“You can exercise, eat well, and be emotionally healthy, but if you don’t floss, cavities could be just the beginning of your problems. 

Flossing every day is so crucial to health that it’s one of the questions included in the Living to 100 Life Expectancy Calculator.” ~BusinessInsider.com

I’m pretty sure that I’m not the only one who feels guilty going to get my teeth cleaned, because I know that the dental assistant is going to make me feel bad for not flossing. I’m not the only one who remembers to floss for 2-3 days before that cleaning, then promptly forgets to floss until just before the next cleaning. Or I floss when I can feel something stuck between my teeth.

For over half a century that has been my flossing story, until a month ago. I seem to have developed a bit of a gap between two of my lower back left molars and food gets stuck in there very easily. I learned this when I had to floss a few days in a row because I could feel food between these teeth. After that, I was in the bathroom the following night without the feeling of something stuck and decided to floss anyway, after brushing my teeth. Sure enough there was food stuck between those same molars even though I didn’t feel it.

I was a bit grossed out thinking that every night I go to bed with decaying food between my teeth, even though I always brush my teeth. I realized that I’m probably going to get a cavity if I don’t do this daily. And just like that a new habit was finally formed!

So here are is my public service announce: You will increase your life expectancy by flossing every day; it’s a small, easy habit that doesn’t take long in your day; and if you don’t do it, you probably go to sleep every night with decaying food in you mouth.

Want to start this healthy, life-extending habit? Do a 3-night experiment: Brush your teeth like you usually do for three nights in a row… then floss your teeth.

See what you leave behind in your mouth every night, despite your good habit of brushing.